ColdSteel SDK Early Adopter released

[Jedive]

The Early Adopter version of the ColdSteel SDK has been released. Please have in mind that this version is still techniqually in beta state. Many features are not implemented yet (like detailed collision information, physics, audio, or networking), and it only contains the font, material, and particle editors (physics and scene editors will come soon). The software may contain bugs also.

A demo version of the SDK will be released in the next couple of days. If you are unsure of purchasing the engine, you should wait to try the demo before.

Current features:

Core
- Windows 98/ME/2K/XP platforms.
- All functions documented.
- Supports packed media (to have all the files of your game inside a single compressed package).
- File system with support for reading data inside compressed packages.
- Integrated XML parser and writer.
- Fast collision detection and response.
- The engine comes as a dll, to integrate it with any application or programming language.*

Rendering
- High performance rendering through DirectX9 and OpenGL**.
- Indoor and outdoor scene management.
- Octree rendering for mesh occlusion.
- Bone and vertex based character animation.
- LOD-based terrain rendering.
- Billboards.
- Light maps.
- Realtime volumetric shadows.
- Dynamic lights.
- Alpha-blending.
- Environment mapping.
- Bump & parallax mapping.
- Pixel and vertex shaders, up to version 3.0 (HLSL, GLSL, and ASM shaders are supported.)
- Particle effects.
- Custom bitmap fonts.
- Supports multiple model formats: md2, x, ms3d, my3d.
- Supports multiple texture formats: bmp, png, jpg, tga, pcx, psd.

Tools
- gile exporter for the .my3d format.
- Material editor.
- Particle editor.
- Font editor.

* Comes with the needed files to use the engine with: Blitz3D, BlitzMax, BlitzPlus, C / C++, IBasic Professional, PlayBasic, PureBasic.
** OpenGL renderer is still considered beta.

ColdSteel SDK Early Adopter is available for purchase at the price of 39.95€.

If you want to purchase, go here.

Please visit the official forums at: http://www.coldsteelengine.com/forums/



http://www.coldsteelengine.com

[2dman]

So, this increaes the demands of playbasic from the advertised Dx3 to Dx9?? I don't see how this is "for Playbasic"????

[kevin]

The ColdSteel engine can be attached to PB, like pretty much any other language.  Now since the engine uses the Dx9/GL api's, any applications developed using ColdSteel from PB, or any other language assume this requirement also.

[2dman]

???

"There seems to be a bug in PlayBasic which makes PB rounding big integer values which are returned by the ColdSteel dll. Until this is sorted out, I have removed PlayBasic support from the engine. It shouldn't take more than a few days to be fixed.

Sorry for the inconveniences.

Javier San Juan,
ColdSteel developer."

[kevin]

Yes it's known and was fixed the same day he noticed it.  Although the retail editions have only just been updated in the last couple of days.

[Chas]

-The link to the ColdSteel forum seems to be broken :(

Out of interest, how do you see Playbasic+ColdSteel comparing to DarkBasic?

[kevin]

Well, the Cold Steel + PB combination  is still a bit of an unknown quantity really.  While the pair should outclass DB classic without much effort.  That's nothing more than an educated guess at this point.

 It'd be a much more difficult comparison say between Dbpro and PB+CS combo today.  Mainly as Dbpro has more computational grunt than PB does today.   While the performance gap is closing !   DBpro is a known quantity.    

  So my best guess today would be that the  PB+CS combination would come somewhere in between DB + Dbpro.

[stef]

Hi!

If you read other forums you will see that  coldsteel isn't (of course) also bugfree.It causes crashes on several systems.
But must say that the temple-demo runs on my laptop. Doesn't looking bad.

Greetings
doc

[Jedive]

Hi stef.

The problem which caused the engine not work on multi-core CPU's were fixed, so it should work correctly now :)

[dib]

Nobody liked the collision performance (very strange and bad) in temple demo
this kind of demonstration just do you want to stay far.